The Awakened Kingdom Read online

  It is not like the music in the gods’ realm, which is why I did not recognize it at first. Only two beats overlapping, no harmonies or clicks or static or interweaving thoughts, and the beats were not even as fast as pulsar-beats. The boys’ singing was not especially interesting, either, just words chanted over and over, a couple of tones harmonizing. It was catchy, though, and I liked it even if it was very simple. I moved forward a few feet behind the boys I had seen before, who were still whispering as they edged into the circle of other boys. Most of the boys around us were bigger, older, with heavy jaws and deep voices and big shoulders beneath their robes. They moved aside as us younger ones came through, though, grinning down at us in welcome, and I could not help smiling shyly back. One of the big boys patted me on the back. “It’s all right,” he said. “You don’t have to, if you don’t want to. Just do what feels right.”

  “OK,” I said, not really knowing what else to say. It must have been right, because the big one pushed me forward, closer to the circle’s center, so I could see.

  And then it was WOW I had never seen COOL I really liked WHEE there was stuff going SWISH and legs going KICK and IT WAS AMAZING.

  What? Oh, fine, I will say it better.OK. The boys in the circle were fighting.

  It did not look like fighting, not at first, because everything was swirling robes and looping rivers of hair. It looked like dancing, or what Papa Tempa had said dancing looked like. It was harder than dancing, though, faster, and the feel of it was not about the music. The boys rode the music, but they were focused on each other, and everything in them was all fierce! And wanting to win! One boy’s foot came out from a swirl of robe and swept the other’s ankle and that one fell back but caught himself to turn the fall into a flip. He swirled away, always swirling, everything a circle. Suddenly I understood: it was supposed to look like a dance, even if it was really a fight!

  And I wanted to fight-dance, too, watching them! I did dance a little, because the drums were so nice, and because the boys’ song pulled me along like the Maelstrom when It is hungry. But I wanted to do the other dance, too!

  Then somebody called out, and the drums stopped, and the boys at the center ended their swirls and faced each other. I could feel how much they wanted to keep fighting, but instead each one of them crossed a big wide sleeve over his face and dipped down on one leg for a minute, which said respect in the language without words. Then they went back into the circle, and all the boys around us cheered and stamped and the air got hot with joy!

  But then everybody got quiet, shushing and elbowing each other, more excited for some reason. I turned to look where everyone else was looking, and gasped when they gasped as another boy stepped through the crowd. I don’t know why they gasped. I gasped because even though this boy was just a mortal like all the rest, he wasn’t wearing any of the robey things boys in Darr liked to wear. He had on loose pants, and the slipper-shoes boys wear, but above the pants he didn’t have on anything except brown skin! The boy had a lot of hair like all the others, too, but his was all clipped up on top of his head in big loopy knots. The starkness of him was like a slap in the eyeballs.

  I also gasped because I recognized him! It was the boy from the market. His was the scent I had detected in the empty room of Fahno’s house; there had been echoes of Fahno in it because they were related somehow. And now I knew why he hadn’t been there, even though all the mortals in Fahno’s house were supposed to be asleep. He looked different from that day in the market in other ways: darker, somehow. More vibrant, more fierce, with more of his true self showing through the skin—like Naha when the wildness comes. When the boy stepped forward, holding up his arms to get everyone’s attention, all the other boys breathed together, ensnared. Of course they were! In that moment, I was, too. He felt like another god.

  “Eino,” said one of the boys I’d followed. He said it the same way I said, the Three.

  “Comes the midnight,” Eino said, turning with his arms still spread. “Comes the moondown. ’Tis the Nightlord’s time, all deepfine and cool and scary. ’Tis the time when boys—men—come out to play.”

  Laughter rippled through the boys, and someone whooped on the other side of the circle; there were other shouts, stamping feet, raised fists trailing colored robe-sleeves. Eino laughed, too, throwing his head back so that the cords of his long neck stood out. I had never realized mortals could be like this. I had no idea why he was talking so funny, either, but it was perfect for the moment, for the moonlight, for the boys’ excitement. When he hissed and ran forward and leapt into the middle of the circle, landing in a crouch, everyone hissed, too, some of them crouching, too, moving to Eino’s rhythm the same way they’d moved to the drums before. “Time for the midnight dance!” cried one, and others took up the cry, punching the air and swirling and swaying even without music. When Eino drew himself up, though, straight and taut with one hand held out in invitation, everyone got quiet again.

  “Go on,” whispered one boy nearby to another. But that one shook his head.

  “It’s Eino!” That was another boy. I think it was supposed to make everyone excited, and it did. “Eino!”

  “I don’t know.” “You can!” “You can do it!” “Look at how strong he is.” “He’s one of us.” “Do it and see!” So much wanting, from all the boys around me. So many whispers, so many hopes, so much fear. That was when I finally understood: everybody was excited because Eino was offering to dance with one of them. He just wanted a volunteer!

  Well, that was easy.

  “I’ll do it!” I jumped up and down, waving my hand. Everybody got quiet, then moved aside so there was nothing between me and Eino.

  Eino tilted his head and lowered his hand. He was so still, all shining skin and muscle in the firelight. His eyes were very black, too. “Haven’t seen you before. Or have I?” His eyes narrowed, and even though I was wearing a different body, I got nervous. Maybe he could see my soul? Mortals weren’t supposed to be able to do that. He shook his head, finally, and I relaxed. “Shed those window-drapes the women have put on you, baby boy. Here in our place we dance like Nahadoth, shadows and chaos, feeling the dark with our skin.”

  Eagerly I threw off the robes, which I didn’t like anyway, until I had on nothing but pants and slippers like him. He grinned when I tried to stand like him, mostly failing because he was much bigger and prettier, almost a man. I was shaped like a boy, but still just a little one. “Nice. You’re feeling it.” He jerked his head toward my head, though, and I remembered the long hair. Hastily I tied it in a big knot at the back of my head, and he nodded approval. “Let’s dance, then.”

  He came at me, no pause and no preparation—not straight on, though. It was the circling of before, the swirling dance, in and out and revolving. Since he wasn’t wearing robes or hair I could see it better now. I stood for a minute, getting the feel of it, then clumsily tried to move like he did; everyone laughed, at first.

  But then—oh. Ohhhh. The chanting started again. The foot-stomping shook the fires, making the light jump, sound and sight in rhythm, cacophony given meaning, and that made it just the tiniest bit like the gods’ realm. Then it became easy to mimic the way Eino sort of jog-jumped into the circle and back, and to use the momentum the way he did, turning and turning, arms out, legs flying. At once I could feel the way moving in circles made the center of me almost unshakable. I could dart in unpredictable directions even while seeming to follow a pattern! Eino was circling on his side of the circle, waiting for me to get the hang of it, but that was no fun! I darted toward him and back. Come at me! Eino puffed out an approving sort of laugh, and then the dance really got started.

  Oh, it was perfect. No drums this time, but none were needed; the boys’ voices were heavy and deep, their movements in unison like a guide. I went to the ground when Eino did, planting my hands in the dust and kicking out with my legs, laughing and breathless when he dodged me effortlessly with a backflip, delighted even when he leapt back and slammed me
to the ground. It hurt, but what was pain? The dance became everything. The dance was worship, and strength, and better magic than anything I’d ever known in my short life. “I am!” I cried, and maybe it was boy-language and maybe it was god-language but it did not matter because it had the same meaning either way! Eino felt it, too, and he answered me in kind with sweat and ferocity and magic. Now when he threw a fist at me the movement said FORCE and it hit me really hard! If I had been mortal I would’ve gone flying; several of the boys in the ring behind me cried out and fell. But I laughed and said back WIND, silly! And I spun the force away in a gust that made everybody’s pretty long hair whip around. Then Eino stomped the ground and I felt the verb of his muscles shout SHATTER, and the ground cracked in a line of rubble from his feet toward mine. (His eyes got really big, but the dance had him; he had no time to react, beyond this.) So I jumped up high, like ten feet into the air, and I said WHEE without words and he stopped staring at the ground and stared at me instead. The dance! He started to grin. Then he jumped, too, not as high but just right, and we both landed in a spin. We spun and spun, our circle getting wider as the other boys backed away, the earth shaking harder, the chanting growing louder and harsher and faster until—

  Everything stopped.

  I was mid-leap when the world suddenly narrowed to a fine point, and my whole self shifted and flexed and rang like a bell.

  I understood. I understood something new!

  “Power,” I said softly. I uncurled myself from the leap and stuck to the air in surprise. “That must be part of it!”

  “Yes,” said Nahadoth, who curled out of the shadows of the crowd.

  I turned happily. “Naha!” She materialized in grace and silence out of the crowd, the swirls of her substance licking and flickering round every boy nearby. Their abandon fed her and she fed them in turn, for this was her time and they had invoked her spirit. The fire went out as she passed, the logs pop-hissing as they frosted over—but the moonlight above, and that from her face, was more than enough to see by.

  “Look how you’ve grown,” she said. “Multiple shapes, new perspectives, new languages…Shill.”

  I beamed, putting my hands on my hips. “Yes, Naha! Hello, hello! I made that name up myself. Do you like it?”

  “It is beautiful.” I could not be sure if she was talking about me, though, because she had stopped to stare at Eino, frozen as he was in mid-lunge. For a moment a look that was avid, almost greedy, came over Nahadoth’s face, and I started to get worried. Eino had spoken Naha’s name in the dark. Even I knew that was never safe.

  Maybe I could make her think about something else. “Naha, I think I found a little bit of my nature! It’s power!”

  “Yes.” She was reaching out to touch Eino’s face. I got really nervous, because I liked Eino—but she just drew a finger over his lips, so I relaxed. “Not your power, though.”

  “I—” Oh. “Huh?”

  “Can you not see?” Naha was behind Eino now, staring intently at his back like she wanted to hollow him out and live in his skin. “Look, Shill. We made your eyes from the stuff of the Maelstrom Itself. See everything.”

  So I looked again, really hard, and then I looked some more, and then I got bored and started thinking about whether power had anything to do with being a trickster like I wanted, I mean what if I ended up being something weird like the godling of lizards or something, I didn’t want to be weird, and then all of a sudden I saw all the realms and all the paths and all the lines of meaning that mortals could not.

  “Oh!” I dropped to the ground and trotted over to one of the boys standing frozen around us. There it was: a little bloorp of intention, of devotion, running from him to Eino. “And oh!” I ran over to another boy; another bloorp, like a thread made of bubbles, or maybe heat haze. A tie. A web. They were all of them, every boy at that camp, fixed on Eino. Every one of them had given him something of themselves, making him stronger; every one of them would die for him. Because of the dance? I did not know. But even I had a little, thin link to him. Mine, however, glowed gold-white, and it ran in both directions. I was making him stronger, but he was making me stronger at the same time. I didn’t know what that meant.

  “We make them in our image,” Nahadoth breathed, “and they replicate us endlessly in their own.”

  I didn’t understand at all, but that was pretty normal when talking to Naha. I just shrugged.

  When Naha stepped out from behind Eino, I finally noticed how the little city Yukur was shivering, the very bricks of it radiating awe and fear at her presence. It did not protest her being there, though the shape she wore was female now, because she was even less a she than I was the he I seemed to be. It would not have mattered much if Yukur had protested, though; Nahadoth was Nahadoth. Rules meant nothing to the god of chaos and change.

  I trotted over to stand before her; at once the tendrils of her swept round me, possessive. “I know you didn’t want me to come here, Naha,” I said, earnestly. “I…I hope you’re not mad.”

  She looked amused, cupping my face in her hands. “I have no interest in obedient children.” Then the light of her face dimmed, and for some reason she looked away, southward. There was nothing south except that other continent of the planet; what was she thinking about, looking that way? “But beware, Shill. Never underestimate mortals—especially not where power is involved. Not even when they have power of their own already.” She looked at Eino again, and this time the look was cold. “They always crave more.”

  I nodded solemnly, even though I did not understand this, either. I was more now, smarter maybe, but some things were not about smarts.

  Naha left off glaring at Eino to look up at the moon which echoed her face, quick-switch as always. “‘Comes the moondown,’” she said, thoughtful. It could have meant lots of things. “You should warn them, by the way.”

  And then, because that was how Naha said good-bye, she faded away.

  A moment later time snapped back into place. The chanting boys resumed and then faltered, startled; the leaping blur that was Eino landed and stumbled; the boys nearest the fire gasped and jerked in surprise when they found it suddenly extinguished and icy-cold.

  And suddenly Eino stared at me, recognizing me at last through the boy-flesh and the dance-haze. “You.”

  Whoops. “Oh. Um. Hello.” Everyone stared at me; for the first time, this was really uncomfortable. To distract them, I added, “I’m, um, supposed to warn you about something.”

  Everything was quiet for long enough to make me squirm. Then Eino suddenly flinched and inhaled and looked away, toward the entrance to Yukur. His eyes widened. “Oh, slippy-dicked hells.”

  Everyone looked where he was looking. There was nothing to see—but I didn’t need eyes to see, and clearly Eino didn’t, either. Along the half-hidden road that led to Yukur came a bunch of women, all skintight and teeth-bared and cruel-cold. I could not hear their thoughts because they weren’t thinking very loud, but I could taste their intent anyway, because that was not a thought but a feeling: anticipation. Hunting-lust, and maybe other kinds, too. For…for…I inhaled. They were coming for all the boys here!

  Right in that moment, one of the boys near the edge of the terrace saw the women’s torches through the trees. We all heard his broken-voiced shout, though I couldn’t make out the words, and suddenly boys in that direction cried out and began to scatter—some down another set of steps toward the trees on Yukur’s other side, some toward us and away from the women, some down the main terrace steps and right toward them.

  “No!” Eino’s voice had the deepness of a near man; most of them heard him. “No, don’t run! We have to stand together—face them—demonshit!”

  No one was listening. I had no idea what was happening, but I thought maybe people should listen to Eino. HEY! I said with god-talk into all the boy-heads around. Not all of them heard me even then; some of them were too afraid. But most of the boys stopped or stumbled, and turned back to stare at Eino a
s if he’d been the one to yell at them.

  Eino threw me a quick glance; I didn’t know if he was mad or what. But he waved his arms at the boys. “Here! To me!” He turned to the boys nearby, herding them toward the rear of the dance-terrace where the firelight did not reach and the shadows of the surrounding forest were flickery and subtle. Oh! I saw what he meant to do! I grinned and trotted along with him, as more of the boys who had heard me ran to join him, huddling together and whispering in harsh, fearful voices.

  “Hush!” Eino’s hiss stilled them. He stepped in front of them, facing the stairs and spreading his arms as if to cloak the boys behind him, though there were at least twenty of them and he did not have hair that moved like Naha’s. And yet—hee! After a moment the shadows around us stretched, weaving together and becoming less dappled, more solid, more obscure…until when the first woman came up the steps, dragging a panting boy with her, she saw nothing. We were invisible to mortal eyes.

  More women came up, some of them also hauling boys who struggled or stumbled along with heads bowed or faces tear-streaked. But as the first woman looked around and didn’t see us even though we were standing right there, her brows drew together in a scowl. “This is it?”

  Another woman crouched by the boys’ fire, which had thawed out and looked as though it hadn’t been lit in ages. Clever Naha! “Looks like. Unless the others fled into the forest?”

  “Bunch of untrimmed boys in the forest, at night, in a tither? We’ll never see them again,” muttered another woman.

  “Demonshit. I don’t want to hear it in Council if one of them gets eaten by a jaguar. Spread out beyond the city, try to pick up trails.” The first woman glared at the cold fire. Then she yanked around the boy she held, to face her. “I heard more voices than just you few. Where’d the rest go?”